preview

Essay about Have You Ever Wondered How Big the Milky Way Really Is?

Decent Essays

Have you ever wondered how big the Milky Way really is? Well,an American astronomer named Harlow Sharpley gave us the accurate answer to this question in 1920.He began his research in 1914 with studying stars called Global Clusters.He continued his studies and stayed persistent throughout the years until he found the answers he was looking for.Our world is unbelievably big and there are so many undiscovered things out there that there is no limit for the amount that we can learn about it.Up until 1920 we didn’t even have an idea of the actual size of the Milky Way,But thanks to this man we are at least given a range of the amount of things out there that are waiting to be discovered.Throughout his early years,and adult life he has always …show more content…

She was fascinated by her husband’s career.She assisted him and his astronomical research both at Mount Wilson and at the Harvard Observatory.She was a Writer and produced many informational articles.Her work consisted mostly of information on eclipsing stars and other astronomical objects because she was interested in her husband's work ,she loved writing about it.They made a family of seven.They had a total of four sons and one daughter.One of which followed in his father’s footsteps in liking to learn,and became a mathematician whose name is widely known as Lloyd Sharpley because who won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012. Harlow and his son’s lives were shattered with Martha’s death in 1981.
To begin with his contribution to Astronomy, it all started at Princeton University.This is where he gained his interest for astronomy.He studied under Henry Norris Russell whose studies involved the measure of the distance between stars.With the research Harlow worked on,he helped support and prove the concept that Cepheids were not spectroscopic binaries and that they were pulsators.He was the first to realize that the Milky Way was much larger than people thought or could even imagne that it could be.He also found that the sun’s location had a certain distinct place within the Milky Way.His discovery was an important part to the copernican principle,which stated that the Earth was not the center

Get Access